An ongoing adventure of travel and living while using a wheelchair. Tim has been disabled from birth. Darryl is his father and caregiver who travels with him.
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Sunday, October 10, 2010

Tomorrow marks the 613th anniversary of the day Italian explorer Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas, setting off the European dominance and colonization of America. This gives us a good time to look back at our limited adventures in Italy.

We have yet to really get into Italy, so far we've just nibbled around the northern corners of the country. Here are some of those highlights.

2006 - Day trip from Cannes to San Remo, Italy.

The car is ours for one more day so we run for the border. It’s not a long drive to Italy so we decide to head to San Remo for the day and to have a nice Italian lunch.

The autostrada is way up the hill, San Remo is at the bottom and it’s a steep, windy, and narrow road down. We make it and even find a free parking lot on the beach where we find this old Fiat 500. The old Italian men nearby tell us that there are still a lot of the old versions of this car running around Italy, we soon find out they’re right.

There’s a nice, but rocky, private beach here and we walk along the beachfront until we find a ramp up into the town. There’s a lot of traffic and about five blocks of shops and restaurants. San Remo looks like an Italian town that’s seen its best days pass by. A little ragged around the edges…still a nice place…but not one that tourists will flock to.

A small trattoria with tables on the sidewalk provided the lunch of a simple pasta with cheese and olive oil sauce. It was delicious and just right in the amount, not the gut-busting plates of pasta we get back home.

2009 - Day trip from Munich to Bolzano, Italy

Here's a short out take from our European video of Bolzano that we didn't use in the final edit.

Since we have the car till the end of the trip, the next day is another day trip, this time to the northern Italian town of Bolzano for lunch and to see Otzi.

It’s around a two hour drive on the autobahn...which turns into the autostrada in Italy...over the Brenner pass through the alps. Into the center of Bolzano, we turn into an underground car park and make our way to the central plaza where we dine on pasta, pizza, and shrimp.

A couple of blocks away is the Archaeological Museum and the home of Otzi. Back in 1991, a couple were hiking in the nearby mountains and saw a body at the edge of a melting glacier. The authorities were called, because it looked like an avalanche victim was uncovered by the spring thaw. The body was taken to the local examiner where it was discovered that this was actually a 5,300 year old body. Today, the museum focuses on different types of mummies, with its main attraction being that 5,300 year old found in the mountains...Otzi.There are many human and animal remains on display here with various types of mummification methods. It is completely wheelchair accessible and there is even an in-floor lift that raises you and your chair up so you can see into the vault where Otzi’s body is stored. If this all sounds a bit morbid, it’s not. It’s just another very interesting museum that lacks any sense of the macabre at all.